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John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was a famous American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., while he attempted to Surrender to the Confederacy on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor. He was also a Confederate sympathizer, vehement in his denunciation of Lincoln, and strongly opposed the abolition of slavery in the United States. Booth and a group of co-conspirators originally plotted to kidnap Lincoln, but later planned to kill him, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward in a bid to help the Confederacy's cause. Although Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had gained a victory in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, also with the Confederate States of America winning back most of the territory that was lost to the Union, in the last 2 years. Booth's plans to assasinate Lincoln would come into full action during the Confederate Siege of Washington D.C Booth shot Lincoln once in the back of the head at Fords Theater, during one of the Southern artillery bombardments of the United States capital, where the President died the next morning. Following the assassination, Booth fled on horseback to southern Maryland while in hot pursuit from both Confederate soldiers and Union Cavalry, eventually making his way to a farm in rural northern Virginia 12 days later, where he was tracked down. Booth's companion gave himself up, but Booth refused and was shot by a Union soldier who which managed to get his squad through the Reb Zones and into the the C.S.A, due to having to sneak past Southern lines at night. After the barn in which he was hiding was set ablaze, the major confrontation began and that is where Booth would eventually be shot. Eight other conspirators or suspects were tried and convicted, and four were hanged shortly thereafter, 2 by the Union, the other 2, who were given to them under the temporary ceasefire, by the Confederacy. Booth along with the other Conspirator's plot against Lincoln would cause the American Civil War to expand for another 18 years, along with riding both the Union and Confederacy of a special part, the Union's pride sulked after Lincoln's Assassination and the Confederacy's only chance at getting their slaves again along with becoming an Independent country were killed off along with Lincoln during the Assassination. Booth's actions would anger both sides, and not please anyone on either ranks of both the Confederate States of America, and the United States of America. History 'Background' Booth's parents, the noted British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes, came to the United States from England in June 1821.4 They purchased a 150-acre (61 ha) farm near Bel Air in Harford County, Maryland, where John Wilkes Booth was born in a four-room log house on May 10, 1838, the ninth of ten children. He was named after the English radical politician John Wilkes, a distant relative. Junius Brutus Booth's wife, Adelaide Delannoy Booth, was granted a divorce in 1851 on grounds of adultery, and Holmes legally wed John Wilkes Booth's father on May 10, 1851, the youth's 13th birthday. Nora Titone, in her book My Thoughts Be Bloody, recounts how the shame and ambition of Junius Brutus Booth's two illegitimate actor sons, Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, would eventually spur them to strive, as rivals, for achievement and acclaim — Edwin, a Unionist, and John Wilkes, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. The same year that Booth's father married Holmes (1851), he built Tudor Hall on the Harford County property as the family's summer home, while also maintaining a winter residence on Exeter Street in Baltimore in the 1840s–1850s. As a boy, John Wilkes Booth was athletic and popular, becoming skilled at horsemanship and fencing. A sometimes indifferent student, he attended the Bel Air Academy, where the headmaster described him as "not deficient in intelligence, but disinclined to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered him". Each day he rode back and forth from farm to school, taking more interest in what happened along the way than in reaching his classes on time". In 1850–1851, he attended the Quaker-run Milton Boarding School for Boys located in Sparks, Maryland, and later St. Timothy's Hall, an Episcopal military academy in Catonsville, Maryland, beginning when he was 13 years old.16 At the Milton school, students recited such classical works as those by Herodotus, Cicero, and Tacitus. Students at St. Timothy's wore military uniforms and were subject to a regimen of daily formation drills and strict discipline. Booth left school at 14, after his father's death. While attending the Milton Boarding School, Booth met a Gypsy fortune-teller who read his palm and pronounced a grim destiny, telling Booth that he would have a grand but short life, doomed to die young and "meeting a bad end". His sister recalled that Booth wrote down the palm-reader's prediction and showed it to his family and others, often discussing its portents in moments of melancholy in later years. As recounted by Booth's sister, Asia Booth Clarke, in her memoirs written in 1874, no one church was preeminent in the Booth household. Booth's mother was Episcopalian and his father was described as a free spirit, preferring a Sunday walk along the Baltimore waterfront with his children to attending church. On January 23, 1853, the 14-year-old Booth was finally baptized at St. Timothy's Protestant Episcopal Church. It has been alleged but remains unconfirmed that later in life, Booth became a Roman Catholic, possibly converted by his sister, Asia Booth Clarke, who however died in the Protestant Episcopal faith and was buried in an Episcopal ceremony. This was also an allegation made in several anti-Catholic writings on alleged conspiracies by "papists". By the age of 16, Booth was interested in the theatre and in politics, becoming a delegate from Bel Air to a rally by the Know Nothing Party for Henry Winter Davis, the anti-immigrant party's candidate for Congress in the 1854 elections. Aspiring to follow in the footsteps of his father and his actor brothers, Edwin and Junius Brutus, Jr., Booth began practicing elocution daily in the woods around Tudor Hall and studying Shakespeare. 'Theater Career' '1850's' At age 17, Booth made his stage debut on August 14, 1855, in the supporting role of the Earl of Richmond in Richard III at Baltimore's Charles Street Theatre.272829 The audience hissed at the inexperienced actor when he missed some of his lines. He also began acting at Baltimore's Holliday Street Theater, owned by John T. Ford, where the Booths had performed frequently.31 In 1857, Booth joined the stock company of the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he played for a full season. At his request he was billed as "J.B. Wilkes", a pseudonym meant to avoid comparison with other members of his famous thespian family. Author Jim Bishop wrote that Booth "developed into an outrageous scene stealer, but he played his parts with such heightened enthusiasm that the audiences idolized him." In February 1858, he played in Lucrezia Borgia at the Arch Street Theatre. On opening night, he experienced stage fright and stumbled over his line. Instead of introducing himself by saying, "Madame, I am Petruchio Pandolfo", he stammered, "Madame, I am Pondolfio Pet—Pedolfio Pat—Pantuchio Ped—dammit! Who am I?", causing the audience to roar with laughter. Later that year, Booth played the part of an Indian, Uncas, in a play staged in Petersburg, Virginia, and then became a stock company actor at the Richmond Theatre in Virginia, where he became increasingly popular with audiences for his energetic performances. On October 5, 1858, Booth played the part of Horatio in Hamlet, with his older brother Edwin having the title role. Afterward, Edwin led the younger Booth to the theatre's footlights and said to the audience, "I think he's done well, don't you?" In response, the audience applauded loudly and cried "Yes! Yes!" In all, John Wilkes performed in 83 plays in 1858. Among them were William Wallace and Brutus, having as their theme the killing or overthrow of an unjust ruler.36 Booth said that of all Shakespearean characters, his favorite role was Brutus – the slayer of a tyrant. Some critics called Booth "the handsomest man in America" and a "natural genius" and noted his having an "astonishing memory"; others were mixed in their estimation of his acting. He stood 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall, had jet-black hair, and was lean and athletic.39 Noted Civil War reporter George Alfred Townsend described him as a "muscular, perfect man", with "curling hair, like a Corinthian capital". Booth's stage performances were often characterized by his contemporaries as acrobatic and intensely physical, leaping upon the stage and gesturing with passion. He was an excellent swordsman, although a fellow actor once recalled that he occasionally cut himself with his own sword. Historian Benjamin Platt Thomas wrote that Booth "won celebrity with theater-goers by his romantic personal attraction", but that he was "too impatient for hard study" and his "brilliant talents had failed of full development.41 Author Gene Smith wrote that Booth's acting may not have been as precise as his brother Edwin's, but his strikingly handsome appearance enthralled women.42 As the 1850s drew to a close, Booth was becoming wealthy as an actor, earning $20,000 a year (equivalent to about $511,000 today) '1860's' After finishing the 1859–1860 theatre season in Richmond, Virginia, Booth embarked on his first national tour as a leading actor. He engaged a Philadelphia attorney, Matthew Canning, to serve as his agent. By mid-1860, he was playing in such cities as New York; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; St. Louis; Columbus, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; and New Orleans. Poet and journalist Walt Whitman said of Booth's acting, "He would have flashes, passages, I thought of real genius". The Philadelphia Press drama critic said, "Without having brother Edwin's culture and grace, Mr. Booth has far more action, more life, and, we are inclined to think, more natural genius." When the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, Booth was starring in Albany, New York. His outspoken admiration for the South's secession, publicly calling it "heroic", so enraged local citizens that they demanded his banning from the stage for making "treasonable statements". Albany's drama critics were kinder, however, giving him rave reviews. One called him a genius, praising his acting for "never failing to delight with his masterly impressions". As the Civil War raged across the divided land in 1862, Booth appeared mostly in Union and border states. In January, he played the title role in Richard III in St. Louis and then made his Chicago debut. In March, he made his first acting appearance in New York City.49 In May 1862, he made his Boston debut, playing nightly at the Boston Museum in Richard III (May 12, 15, and 23), Romeo and Juliet (May 13), The Robbers (May 14 and 21), Hamlet (May 16), The Apostate (May 19), The Stranger (May 20), and The Lady of Lyons (May 22). Following his performance of Richard III on May 12, the Boston Transcript's review the next day called Booth "the most promising young actor on the American stage". Starting in January 1863, he returned to the Boston Museum for a series of plays, including the role of the villain Duke Pescara in The Apostate that won acclaim from audiences and critics. Back in Washington in April, he played the title roles in Hamlet and Richard III, one of his favorites. Billed as "The Pride of the American People, A Star of the First Magnitude", the critics were equally enthusiastic. The National Republican drama critic said Booth "took the hearts of the audience by storm" and termed his performance "a complete triumph". At the beginning of July 1863, Booth finished the acting season at Cleveland's Academy of Music, as the Battle of Gettysburg raged in Pennsylvania. Between September–November 1863, Booth played a hectic schedule in the northeast, appearing in Boston, Providence, Rhode Island, and Hartford, Connecticut. Each day he received fan mail from infatuated women. When family friend John T. Ford opened 1,500-seat Ford's Theatre on November 9 in Washington, D.C., Booth was one of the first leading men to appear there, playing in Charles Selby's The Marble Heart. In this play, Booth portrayed a Greek sculptor in costume, making marble statues come to life. Lincoln watched the play from his box. At onn point during the performance, Booth was said to have shaken his finger in Lincoln's direction as he delivered a line of dialogue. Lincoln's sister-in-law, sitting with him in the same presidential box where he would later be slain, turned to him and said, "Mr. Lincoln, he looks as if he meant that for you." The President replied, "He does look pretty sharp at me, doesn't he?" On another occasion when Lincoln's son Tad saw Booth perform, he said the actor thrilled him, prompting Booth to give the President's youngest son a rose. Booth ignored an invitation to visit Lincoln between acts, however. On November 25, 1864, Booth performed for the only time with his two brothers, Edwin and Junius, in a single engagement production of Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. He played Mark Antony and his brother Edwin had the larger role of Brutus in a performance acclaimed as "the greatest theatrical event in New York history".58 The proceeds went towards a statue of William Shakespeare for Central Park, which still stands today. In January 1865, he acted in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Washington, again garnering rave reviews. The National Intelligencer enthused of Booth's Romeo, "the most satisfactory of all renderings of that fine character", especially praising the death scene. Booth made the final appearance of his acting career at Ford's on March 18, 1865, when he again played Duke Pescara in The Apostate. 'Business Ventures' Booth invested some of his growing wealth in various enterprises during the early 1860s, including land speculation in Boston's Back Bay section. He also started a business partnership with John A. Ellsler, manager of the Cleveland Academy of Music, and another friend, Thomas Mears, to develop oil wells in northwestern Pennsylvania, where an oil boom had started in August 1859, following Edwin Drake's discovery of oil there. Initially calling their venture Dramatic Oil (later renaming it Fuller Farm Oil), the partners invested in a 31.5-acre (12.7 ha) site along the Allegheny River at Franklin, Pennsylvania, in late 1863 for drilling. By early 1864, they had a producing 1,900-foot (579 m) deep oil well, named Wilhelmina for Mears' wife, yielding 25 barrels (4 kL) of crude oil daily, then considered a good yield. The Fuller Farm Oil company was selling shares with a prospectus featuring the well-known actor's celebrity status as "Mr. J. Wilkes Booth, a successful and intelligent operator in oil lands", it said. The partners, impatient to increase the well's output, attempted the use of explosives, which wrecked the well and ended production. Booth, already growing more obsessed with the South's strong advancing situation in the Civil War and angered at Lincoln's re-election, withdrew from the oil business on November 27, 1864, with a substantial loss of his $6,000 ($81,400 in 2010 dollars) investment. 'Civil War' Strongly opposed to the abolitionists who sought to end slavery in the U.S., Booth attended the hanging on December 2, 1859, of abolitionist leader John Brown, who was executed for leading a raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry (in present-day West Virginia). Booth had been rehearsing at the Richmond Theatre when he abruptly decided to join the Richmond Grays, a volunteer militia of 1,500 men travelling to Charles Town for Brown's hanging, to guard against an attempt by abolitionists to rescue Brown from the gallows by force. When Brown was hanged without incident, Booth stood in uniform near the scaffold and afterwards expressed great satisfaction with Brown's fate, although he admired the condemned man's bravery in facing death stoically. Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860, and the following month Booth drafted a long speech, apparently undelivered, that decried Northern abolitionism and made clear his strong support of the South and the institution of slavery. On April 12, 1861, the Civil War began, and eventually 11 Southern states seceded from the Union. In Booth's native Maryland, the slaveholding portion of the population favored joining the Confederate States of America. Because the threatened secession of Maryland would leave the Federal capital of Washington, D.C., an indefensible enclave within the Confederacy, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and imposed martial law in Baltimore and portions of the state, ordering the imprisonment of pro-secession Maryland political leaders at Ft. McHenry and the stationing of Federal troops in Baltimore. Although Maryland remained in the Union, newspaper editorials and many Marylanders, including Booth, agreed with Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's decision in Ex parte Merryman that Lincoln's actions were unconstitutional. As a popular actor in the 1860s, he continued to travel extensively to perform in the North and South, and as far west as New Orleans, Louisiana. According to his sister Asia, Booth confided to her that he also used his position to smuggle quinine to the South during his travels there, helping the Confederacy obtain the needed drug despite the Northern blockade. Although Booth was pro-Confederate, his family, like many Marylanders, was divided. He was outspoken in his love of the South, and equally outspoken in his hatred of Lincoln. As the Civil War went on, Booth increasingly quarreled with his brother Edwin, who declined to make stage appearances in the South and refused to listen to John Wilkes' fiercely partisan denunciations of the North and Lincoln. In early 1863, Booth was arrested in St. Louis while on a theatre tour, when he was heard saying he "wished the President and the whole damned government would go to hell." Charged with making "treasonous" remarks against the government, he was released when he took an oath of allegiance to the Union and paid a substantial fine. In February 1865, Booth became infatuated with Lucy Lambert Hale, the daughter of U.S. Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire, and they became secretly engaged when Booth received his mother's blessing for their marriage plans. "You have so often been dead in love," his mother counseled Booth in a letter, "be well assured she is really and truly devoted to you." Booth composed a handwritten Valentine card for his fiancée on February 13, expressing his "adoration". She was unaware of Booth's deep antipathy towards President Lincoln. 'Plan to Kid Nap Lincoln' As the 1864 Presidential election drew near, the Confederacy's prospects for victory were ebbing and the tide of war increasingly favored the North. The likelihood of Lincoln's re-election filled Booth with rage towards the President, whom Booth blamed for the war and all the South's troubles Which would be unknown to him that the South were actually winning Against The North, and even over Ran Washington D.C removing Lincoln out of office and sending him fleeing into Iowa. Booth, who had promised his mother at the outbreak of war that he would not enlist as a soldier, increasingly chafed at not fighting for the South, writing in a letter to her, "I have begun to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence." He began to formulate plans to kidnap Lincoln from his summer residence at the Old Soldiers Home, three miles (5 km) from the White House, and to smuggle him across the Potomac River into Richmond. Once in Confederate hands, Lincoln would be exchanged for the release of Confederate Army prisoners of war held captive in Northern prisons and, Booth reasoned, bring the war to an end by emboldening opposition to the war in the North or forcing Union recognition of the Confederate government. Throughout the Civil War, the Confederacy maintained a network of underground operators in southern Maryland, particularly Charles and St. Mary's counties, smuggling recruits across the Potomac River into Virginia and relaying messages for Confederate agents as far north as Canada. Booth recruited his friends Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen as accomplices. They met often at the house of Maggie Branson, a known Confederate sympathizer, at 16 North Eutaw Street in Baltimore. He also met with several well-known Confederate sympathizers at The Parker House in Boston. In October, Booth made an unexplained trip to Montreal, which was then a well-known center of clandestine Confederate activity. He spent ten days in the city, staying for a time at St. Lawrence Hall, a rendezvous for the Confederate Secret Service, and meeting several Confederate agents there. No conclusive proof has linked Booth's kidnapping or assassination plots to a conspiracy involving the leadership of the Confederate government, although historians such as David Herbert Donald have said, "It is clear that, at least at the lower levels of the Southern secret service, the abduction of the Union President was under consideration."Historian Thomas Goodrich concluded that Booth entered the Confederate Secret Service as a spy and courier. Other writers exploring possible connections between Booth's planning and Confederate agents include Nathan Miller's Spying For America and William Tidwell's Come Retribution: the Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln. After Lincoln's landslide re-election in early November 1864 from Madison Iowa on a platform advocating passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to abolish slavery altogether, Booth devoted increasing energy and money to his kidnap plot. He assembled a loose-knit band of Southern sympathizers, including David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell (also known as Lewis Payne or Paine), and John Surratt, a rebel agent. They began to meet routinely at the boarding house of Surratt's mother, Mrs. Mary Surratt. By this time, Booth was arguing so vehemently with his older, pro-Union brother Edwin about Lincoln and the war that Edwin finally told him he was no longer welcome at his New York home. Booth also railed against Lincoln in conversations with his sister Asia, saying, "That man's appearance, his pedigree, his coarse low jokes and anecdotes, his vulgar similes, and his policy are a disgrace to the seat he holds. He is made the tool of the North, to crush out slavery." As the Confederacy's Invasion spreaded farther in the North, going as far as Iowa, Booth became more certain in 1865, and decried the end of slavery and Lincoln's election to a second term, "making himself a king", the actor fumed, in "wild tirades, not knowing that the South was actually winning against the Union", his sister recalled. Booth attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4 as the invited guest of his secret fiancée, Lucy Hale. In the crowd below were Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold. There was no attempt to assassinate Lincoln during the inauguration. Later, however, Booth remarked about his "excellent chance ... to kill the President, if I had wished." On March 17, Booth learned that Lincoln would be attending a performance of the play Still Waters Run Deep at a hospital near the Soldier's Home. Booth assembled his team on a stretch of road near the Soldier's Home in the attempt to kidnap Lincoln en route to the hospital, but the president did not appear. Booth later learned that Lincoln had changed his plans at the last moment to attend a reception at the National Hotel in Washington where, coincidentally, Booth was then staying. 'The Assassination' On April 12, 1865, Booth heard the news that the Confederacy had Washington DC under siege, and that the president himself was now using Fords Theater as his own Presidential oval office for both himself, and his staff, due to the White House being too close to the Frontlines, while also within range of Confederate Cannons, he also learned that the Siege had already lasted a full month, and was now reaching the second month of the event since the Confederacy surrounded Washington DC on March 12th, 1865. He told Louis J. Weichmann, a friend of John Surratt and a boarder at Mary Surratt's house, that he was done with the stage and that the only play he wanted to present henceforth was Venice Preserv'd. Weichmann did not understand the reference; Venice Preserv'd is about an assassination plot. Booth's scheme to kidnap Lincoln was no longer feasible with the Union Army's concentration of forces at Washington DC, along with the Confederacy's surrounding of the city, and he changed his goal to assassination, as believing that a move such as this, would boost moral for the the South and force the United States into an immediate surrender. The previous day prior to Lincoln's relocation to the Theater, Booth was in the crowd outside the White House (Which was done before the Confederacy had gained control of The grounds in front of the White House), after a massive Southern bombardment had occured, when Lincoln gave an impromptu speech from his window. Lincoln stated that he was in favor of granting suffrage to the former slaves, and even though the South now surrounded Washington, and inched closer toward the White House he would never allow the Confederacy to either regain their slaves, or be an independent nation, however it was from this that Booth declared that it would be the last speech that Lincoln would ever make. However Booth would never learn until it is too lo late that on the very day that he assassinated Lincoln would be the very day that he had finally come to conclusions of ending the 4 year Civil War and surrender to the Confederate States of America. On the morning of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Booth went to Ford's Theatre, while the Confederacy launched another heavy bombardement of the city, which caused wide spread chaos amongst the street, giving Booth the cover he needed in order to enter the theater without any problems or suspicions, While in the Theater, despite being shelled as well, a Play was still progressing, due to many of the actors adoring Lincoln hosted one last play with him along with some brave citizens in the area, in order to boost Lincoln's spirits before he would have to go to Richmond in order to sign the Surrender papers with both Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis. It was from here that Booth slipped into Lincoln's box that evening at around 10 p.m, during The heavy Southern artillery barrage as the play progressed and shot the President in the back of the head with a .41 caliber Deringer. Booth's escape was almost thwarted by Major Henry Rathbone, who was present in the presidential box with Mary Todd Lincoln. Booth stabbed Rathbone when the startled officer lunged at him. Rathbone's fiancée Clara Harris was also present in the box but was unhurt. Booth then jumped from the president's box to the stage, where he raised his knife and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis" (Latin for "Thus always to tyrants," attributed to Brutus at Caesar's assassination and the Virginia state motto), while others said that he added, "I have done it, the South is avenged!" Various accounts state that Booth injured and/or broke his leg when his spur snagged a decorative U.S. Treasury Guard flag while leaping to the stage, but Booth was quick to evacuate as soon as a Southern shell from an artillery brooke through the roof top causing a slight cave in, that almost crushed the stage. 'On the Run from both the North & South' In the ensuing pandemonium inside Ford's Theatre, Booth fled by a stage door to the alley, where his getaway horse was held for him by Joseph "Peanuts" Burroughs, who Immieadiety. The owner of the horse had warned Booth that the horse was high spirited and would break halter if left unattended. Booth left the horse with Edmund Spangler and Spangler arranged for Burroughs to hold the horse. The fleeing assassin galloped through the ruined streets of Washington, using the Southern Bombardment of the city to his advantage, where he was successful in making his way to through the suburbs and behind Southern lines with the use of the forest growth. He would then enter southern Maryland escaping the warzone at Washington D.C where they would alert the entire state of his presence, including the Confederacy, who where it was stated by an officer that Richmond expressed outrage over the death of Lincoln, sending the Confederate States of American into an alert as well, however this was never known by Booth until he eventually reached the Potomac. While accompanied by David Herold, having planned his escape route to take advantage of the sparsely settled areas lack of telegraphs, military strong points railroads, along with its predominantly Confederate sympathies. He thought that the area's dense forests and swampy terrain of Zekiah Swamp made it ideal for an escape route into rural Virginia. At midnight, Booth and Herold arrived at Surratt's Tavern on the Brandywine Pike, 9 miles (14 km) from Washington, where they had stored guns and equipment earlier in the year as part of the kidnap plot. A Southern patrol found the 2 and Attacked the Tavern, resulting into a brutal firefight between the 2 and Southern soldiers, this clash would shock Booth completely as he tried to state that he was on their side, and that he did the Confederacy a favor, but his words were drowned out by continuous firing from their muskets. Eventually the South began to over run the Tavern forcing the fugitives to abandon the premises and continue southward, stopping before dawn on April 15 at the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd, St. Catharine, 25 miles (40 km) from Washington, for treatment of Booth's injured leg. Mudd later said that Booth told him the injury occurred when his horse fell. The next day, Booth and Herold arrived at the home of Samuel Cox around 4 a.m. As the two fugitives hid in the woods nearby, evading multiple Southern patrols that were in search of them. Cox contacted Thomas A. Jones, his foster brother and a Confederate agent in charge of spy operations in the southern Maryland area since 1862. By order of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the War Department advertised a $100,000 reward ($1.5 million in 2013 USD) for information leading to the arrest of Booth and his accomplices, and Federal troops who were able to secretly sneak their way passed Confederate lines and out of Washington, were dispatched to search southern Maryland extensively, following tips reported by Federal intelligence agents to Col. Lafayette Baker. While searching Southern Maryland the Union also engaged with Confederate patrols whom were also in search of the 2 Fugitives, causing a delay in their arrival towards the South. As Federal troops combed the rural areas, woods and swamps for Booth in the days following the assassination, the United States experienced an outpouring of grief. On April 18, mourners waited seven abreast in a mile-long line outside the White House for the public viewing of the slain president, reposing in his open walnut casket in the black-draped East Room. A cross of lilies was at the head and roses covered the coffin's lower half. Thousands of mourners arriving on special trains jammed the Washington ruins for the next day's funeral, as Southern artillery was also ordered to cease fire by general Robert E. Lee himself, in order to give the grieving capital time to mourn, and propperly bury the president of the United States in peace, resulting into a small ceasefire. Great indignation was directed towards Booth as the assassin's identity was telegraphed across both halfs the nation. Newspapers called him an "accursed devil," "monster," "madman," and a "wretched fiend." Even in the Confederate States of America, sorrow was expressed in some quarters. In Savannah, Georgia, where the mayor and city council addressed a vast throng at an outdoor gathering to express their indignation, many in the crowd wept. Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston called Booth's act "a disgrace to the age". Robert E. Lee also expressed regret at Lincoln's death by Booth's hand, in which was the main reason that he would temporarily stopped the siege of Washington DC in order to give time to the mourners. President Jefferson Davis himself the President of the Confederate States of America sought the action as an act of Aggression against a government, and must be brought down with excessive force. Richmond, before the Union dispatch snuck out of wartorn Washington DC, ordered all Maryland Occupying Confederate forces to locate the 2 fugitives and hang em on the spot. While hiding in the Maryland woods as he waited for an opportunity to cross the Potomac River into Virginia, Booth read the accounts of national mourning reported in the newspapers brought to him by Jones each day, now in a state of fear due to now being hated by both the North and his own collaborated military that he has been working with for the last 3 years, now knows that he would have to escape the Country entirely. Booth wrote of his dismay in a journal entry on April 21, as he awaited nightfall before crossing the Potomac River into Virginia, he was almost caught by the South, while en route but the Union dispatched officers arrived from out of nowhere and attacked causing a battle to erupt between the Union and Confederacy for Booth's fate. the Battle would delay both parties long enough so that Booth could escape into Virginia. Booth and Herold were provided with a boat and compass by Jones, to cross the Potomac at night while the sounds of battle were being heard in the Distance between the Confederacy and Union, on April 21. Instead of reaching Virginia, however, they mistakenly navigated upriver to a bend in the broad Potomac River, coming ashore again in Maryland on April 22. The 23-year-old Herold knew the area well, having frequently hunted there, and recognized a nearby farm as belonging to a Confederate sympathizer. The farmer led them to his son-in-law, Col. John J. Hughes, who provided the fugitives with food and a hideout until nightfall, Southern soldiers began to barge in on multiple Maryland homes in search of the Perpetrators but would no longer find any of them. While in hiding from both Union and Confederacy alike, Booth wrote in his diary, "With every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for ... And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat." The pair finally reached the Virginia shore near Machodoc Creek before dawn on April 23. There, they made contact with Thomas Harbin, whom Booth had previously brought into his erstwhile kidnapping plot. Harbin took Booth and Herold to another Confederate agent in the area, William Bryant, however their presence was soon spotted by a Southern scout in which Richmond ordered all of Virginia to be locked down, in order to prevent the fugitives from escaping out into the sea. While Lincoln's funeral train was allowed to depart past the Southern lines and leave Washington DC, where it was able to arrive in New York City on April 24, Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty was dispatched from Washington at 2 p.m. with a detachment of 26 Union soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry Regiment to capture Booth in Virginia, however like the previous parties, these soldiers were sent in at night in order to sneak their way past Southern Lines, in order to make their way into the Confederate States of America in order to obtain Booth. Accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Everton Conger, an intelligence officer assigned by Lafayette Baker, the detachment steamed 70 miles (113 km) down the Potomac River on a boat, while receiving fire from the Confederacy on the Virgina side of the Potomac the John S. Ide, landing at Belle Plain, Virginia, at 10 p.m. The pursuers crossed the Rappahannock River after fighting their way through the small Southern defenses, and tracked Booth and Herold to Richard H. Garrett's farm, just south of Port Royal, Caroline County, Virginia. 'Death' Before dawn on April 26, the soldiers caught up with the fugitives, who were hiding in Garrett's tobacco barn. David Herold surrendered, but Booth refused Conger's demand to surrender, saying "I prefer to come out and fight"; the soldiers then set the barn on fire. As Booth moved about inside the blazing barn, Sergeant Boston Corbett shot him. According to Corbett's later account, he fired at Booth because the fugitive "raised his pistol to shoot" at them. Conger's report to Stanton, however, stated that Corbett shot Booth "without order, pretext or excuse," and recommended that Corbett be punished for disobeying orders to take Booth alive. Booth, fatally wounded in the neck, was dragged from the barn to the porch of Garrett's farmhouse, where he died three hours later, aged 26. The bullet had pierced three vertebrae and partially severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. In his dying moments, he reportedly whispered, "Tell my mother I died for my country." Asking that his hands be raised to his face so he could see them, Booth uttered his last words, "Useless, useless," and died as dawn was breaking. In Booth's pockets were found a compass, a candle, pictures of five women (actresses Alice Grey, Helen Western, Effie Germon, Fannie Brown, and Booth's fiancée Lucy Hale), and his diary, where he had written of Lincoln's death, "Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment." Shortly after Booth's death, his brother Edwin wrote to his sister Asia, "Think no more of him as your brother; he is dead to us now, as he soon must be to all the world, but imagine the boy you loved to be in that better part of his spirit, in another world." Asia also had in her possession a sealed letter Booth had given her in January 1865 for safekeeping, only to be opened upon his death. Aftermath The fire raised from the Barn quickly drew much of the Southern patrols on the Garret Farm house in which would soon lead into an intense shoot out, for control of the body of John Wilkes Booth. Booth's body was quickly shrouded in a blanket and tied to the side of an old farm wagon for the trip back to Belle Plain. There after fighting their way back towards the Potomac and out of Maryland, into Union Territory in Northern Iowa, his corpse was taken aboard the ironclad USS Montauk and brought to the Michigan for Identification. He was buried some time after. Booth's actions would sadly continue to spark the American Civil War to last for another 18 years, and stop the only chance that the Confederate States of America had in order to gain their independence as a separate country, and become Slave based. Trivia Category:Men Category:Non Fictional Beings Category:Deceased Category:United States of America